Full Circle

“Ain’t it somethin’? Sat right up there on the counter when I was a tyke while Pops sipped his suds, and here I am, all these years later, standin’ at the same spot, drinkin’ my own beer. You didn’t know my Pops, did you, O’Malley?” I ask after I empty my glass.

I watch Tom O’Malley, wiping off the bar top. Man’s got a patient face. Second generation bar owner, raised up around the locals, educated by what he heard spoken by the gruff men commiserating at the bar stools. His face tells me he knows a story’s coming. He sets another beer in front of me then moves his eyes to focus on the dingy rag while he gives his head a slow shake. Maybe he hopes I don’t notice he answered me, hopes I don’t continue with my tale. But I gotta get it out before I go home. Somebody’s gotta hear what I gotta say.

“Just thinkin’ back to 1980... we was both little kids back then, remember?” I don’t wait for an answer. “Steel mill closed. Rats bounced all the guys’ checks. Somebody had to sign those checks, a real person, acted like the money was there to cover everyone’s salaries, except it wasn’t. What they handed those guys that day was nothing better than play money. And the paychecks bounced, and all the checks everybody wrote out for their mortgages, car payments, utilities, insurances, bounced, too. Now you got bank charges on top of no paycheck. So, funny, ain’t it – nobody’s got any money in the bank the day the mill closed, but they all ran to find a place to drink up the last of what they had in their pockets. Bet there was lots of business in here the day the mill closed. You probably don’t remember my dad much ‘cause he wasn’t in here often. Did most of his drinkin’ at home.”

I quit smoking four years ago, but now that the booze kicked in, I don’t care, and I bum a cigarette. That first drag tastes good. I wonder why I quit in the first place.

“Yeah, middle of the big recession, everybody in our neck of the woods without a job, broke, and you guys raking in the money.” I chuckle at the irony, tapping off an ash from the cigarette. “Funny how it is. Thirty-four hundred guys lost their jobs that day at Pop’s mill…forget about the other mills that closed after that. Everybody talked about the steel mills dryin’ up out east in ‘steel country’, but I didn’t see nobody talkin’ about Chicago!” I pound my fist on the bar top to punctuate my outrage, but nobody’s paying attention. Guy next to me doesn’t budge, still staring at his phone. Guy down at the end of the bar still got his eyes glued to the glowing screen of the video poker game. “Way I figure it, if you ask me, the Chicago flag shoulda gotten a fifth red star put on it to represent when all the mills closed down. Devastated this city as much as the Great Fire did.”

Tom nudges a bowl of peanuts towards me, but I wave it away.

“Anyways, you know what I remember about that day? It was a little rainy, still kinda cold outside; maybe in the 40’s or so? I remember Ma yellin’ at me that I needed a jacket to go play outside. So Pops comes home with his hardhat in his hand, and he looks real sad, a deep sad, like when your dog dies. And he looks like he’s gonna cry, ‘cept Pops never cries. He says, ‘The mill closed. I lost my job.’ And Ma starts bawlin’, and I’m standin’ there, and I don’t know what to say or what to do. I mean, I know the news ain’t good, that’s for sure, but Pops is a really great electrician, and he knows how to fix anything, you know? So I figure he’ll find another job quick. Still, he worked at that mill like almost twenty years, and he liked what he did and thought he’d be there forever. So I figure the thing to do is for me to cry, too. I start cryin’, but I don’t really know why I’m cryin’.” I pause to take a long drink, remembering that confused kid.

“And then you know what he said? I’ll never forget it.” I look O’Malley straight in the eye to make sure he’s paying attention, because this is the thing I want him to remember, too. “He said, ‘Guys were jumpin’ off the bridge’. Can you imagine that? Jumpin’ off the bridge into the Calumet River ‘cause they lost their jobs. And I got scared, thinkin’ to myself, ‘Is my Pops gonna jump off the bridge, too?’ Can’t tell you how long I worried that someday he wasn’t gonna come home; that they’d have to pull his body from the river. I wonder sometimes if Pops saw those guys jump, or if it was just a rumor. Sure hope he didn’t. Horrific thing to see, I imagine.”

I glance up at the television. Too early in the day for anything useful to be on, like a ball game, so there’s some tabloid talk show on instead. I look away. Part of the problem these days...nothing but junk filling our minds. I look over at Tom, who stopped a moment to watch the show while he’s rubbing a glass dry with a towel. He’s got a little smirk on his face, shaking his head, watching two women on the show fighting and pulling each other’s hair. He happens to catch a glimpse of me, and motions to me if I want another beer. I nod my head.

“Whole world’s gone crazy,” Tom says as he pours the beer careful into the tipped glass. He sets it down quiet, then looks me square in the eye and says, “I remember hearin’ about those guys, too.” Then he leans in towards me and says, “You know…the bridge.”

I straighten myself up in my seat, not wanting to think about those men jumping off the bridge anymore. “Yeah.” I tap my fingers on the bar top and run my fingertips over the smooth epoxy, stopping to trace the outline of glass ring marks. “Remember those guys that stood in the middle of the street, selling flowers back then?”

Tom gave a slow nod and rubbed his nose with the back of his wrist.

“I mean, here were these guys that built up this stinkin’ city, right? Guys that worked in the mills, fixin’ stuff with their bare hands, and some of ‘em, all they could find to do was sell flowers in the middle of the street. I remember one time – Pops wasn’t exactly the kind of guy to lend a hand out ‘cause we were struggling – we were driving, and we’re sitting at a stop light. And there’s this guy in the middle of the road, sellin’ flowers; I don’t know if Pops knew him or not. He put the car in park, and didn’t say a word to me. He just gets out of the car all quiet while we’re stopped at the light, and he bought flowers from that guy. And Pops wasn’t the kind of guy to ever bring Ma home flowers, neither, but he bought flowers that day. I never could figure out why when we was so broke, he bought flowers from that guy, that guy standin’ outside in the cold, sellin’ what was left of his pride, wilted flowers all bundled up in crappy, crinkled tissue paper. That was a good day with Pops, though. Really took a toll on him.”

As I finish the cigarette and stub it out, I wish I had another. I gaze at the last trail of smoke rising from the butt, I think about Pops’ dark moods, hoping that won’t happen to me, too.

“He’d get all quiet sometimes, and that’s if we were lucky. But he was usually mad at the world, and that’s when we’d all hear about it, morning ‘til night. That’s all my folks did anyway the whole time they were married, you know? Fight. But the fighting got worse when he wasn’t workin’, and it was at its worst in that house. Not too long after I left home, they finally moved out of that old house of nasty words and broken dreams. Sure glad houses can’t talk…the stories they’d tell. Nobody would ever wanna buy a house, that’s for sure. They’d tear down the old houses to build new ones; quiet ones, ones that didn’t have no history to tell.”

I look up to see the seat next to me now empty, but the guy left me a few cigarettes in his pack. I smile. It’ll be enough. I light another one and inhale deep, and I exhale, blowing smoke up at the ceiling. One of the few places left where you can still smoke inside. O’Malley fought hard for that one…greased a few palms along the way, I imagine. I’m glad for it.

“Tore a lot of those old houses down,” Tom says as he puts a coaster in front of a new patron. “Folks lost ‘em back then.”

“Yeah. For years, I worried that the bank was gonna come and throw us out on the curb in front of all the neighbors, and we’d be homeless.”

I see Tom’s shoulders slump a little and he sighs. He turns away for a moment and returns with a shot for me and gives me a wink. Liquid sympathy for me, I guess. I’ll take it. I hold the glass, looking at the brown liquid inside. I swirl the drink around a bit and watch the long legs, whiskey clinging to the glass. I give Tom a grateful smile and shoot the contents down.

“And that government surplus food...I went with Pops one time to the place where they handed it out. I just stood there, looking down at the holes in my shoes, ‘cause I didn’t wanna make nobody mad at me for starin’ at ‘em too long. I counted all the cracks in the ground and memorized the patterns they made. Couldn’t even tell you what that place looked like, I had my head down the whole time. Guys just stood around chain-smoking, waiting for their food. And you know, I tried hard to be a good kid, eatin’ that food, the mystery cheese and powdered milk and rancid butter, and everything you could do with a bag of cornmeal, but none of it ever tasted right. Maybe it tasted off to me ‘cause I was ashamed of eating charity. Poor Pops. Never thought about how it must’ve felt to him standin’ in that line, a man who’d worked hard all his life to provide for his family and take care of business, but lost his job anyways, and had to wait in line for a handout for somethin’ that wasn’t even his fault. Then there was the food stamps, remember those?”

I look up at Tom and he’s nodding his head. I figure he don’t know nothin’ about the food stamps, but he’s just trying to be a listening ear.

“The dirty looks grocery store cashiers gave you when you handed them that little coupon book. They’d tear out the amount from the booklet, then hand back whatever was left to you, always givin’ you a judgy look, makin’ a face at you, like you was some kind of freeloader. And if it wasn’t the cashier, then it was the folks behind you, clickin’ their tongues or sighin’ really loud, or maybe they didn’t say nothin’, but you just knew they was thinkin’ it…you could feel it. And I remember lookin’ down at my feet, wishin’ me and my too-short blue jeans could disappear.”

Tom gives me a last glance before he turns to wait on a few more customers that just came in. He makes small talk with a couple, and I see the guy’s jacket is dotted with raindrops. Guess it’s raining outside now. That’s okay. The weather fits my mood.

Tom swipes my empty glass off the bar top and puts a glass of water in front of me. Never could figure out when that trend started. In the long history of taverns, nobody ever gave you a glass of water at a bar, but then suddenly, it’s this thing to “stay hydrated”. If I was worried about staying hydrated, I wouldn’t have gone to a bar in the first place. I push the water glass away from me while Tom’s busy with the other customers. I tilt the glass and slide some money underneath.

Tom turns back towards me and I see his eyes dart to where the money is. He looks back up at me, confirming my request to fill my glass again. I nod. Tom’s smart enough to know the customer is always right, and pours me another beer.

“So what happened? You say your folks moved out of their old house, so somethin’ must’ve worked out okay, right?”

I shrug. “Pops started out working two jobs to try and make ends meet. Worked so many hours, doin’ really hard labor jobs…literally worked himself sick. Finally found somethin’ where he only needed to work one job, but still worked ten hours a day, six days a week, sometimes more. I don’t think he ever liked it as much as being an electrician at the mill, and I think working at a job he didn’t like stole a little piece of his soul, you know? But Pops had a sayin’ the whole time I was growin’ up. He used to say, ‘Work smarter, not harder.’ See, the whole time after he lost his job at the mill, he was always talkin’ about how he shoulda taken the job at the phone company – I guess when he graduated high school, he had the choice of working at the phone company or the mill. After he lost his job at the mill, he always regretted not takin’ that phone company job, thinkin’, I guess, that nothin’ bad woulda happened had he only taken that job at the phone company instead. Well, the whole time I’m growin’ up, I hear him talkin’ about that stupid phone company, how he probably shoulda taken that job, so whaddya know, I graduate from high school, and I take the job I know Pops would’ve been most proud of me to have – I get a job at the phone company. I started out in the mailroom, nothin’ glamorous, but Pops thought success, for his kids, at least, meant to work smarter, not harder, and I guess by that, he meant not having to work a million hours a week, and being able to work in a comfy office where you didn’t have to break your back doing physical labor. So I worked my way up all these years. Pops was real proud. He passed a few years back…”

O’Malley crosses himself almost as if on cue. “God rest his soul. So sorry to hear that.”

I wave a hand to let Tom know it’s okay.

“You know what the irony is, though, O’Malley? The thing that brought me here today, the whole reason that got me thinkin’ back to the hard times my Pops and my family went through, was ‘cause that ‘great job’ at the phone company let me go today. ‘Downsizing’.” I laugh, and though the laugh catches me off guard at first, I realize it feels good to laugh. I push more laughter out, and soon, tears sting my eyes.

“So, joke’s on me and my Pops too, I guess, ‘cause there ain’t no ‘good jobs’. Twenty-six years with that place.” I look down to see a new beer in front of me in the place of the glass of water, and I hold it up in homage as a sort of silent toast to Tom, and he returns my gesture with an emphatic nod. “Long gone are the days of retiring with forty years at a job, a pension, and a gold watch, eh, Tom?” I peer at Tom over the top of my beer as I gulp down its contents.

Tom grunts in agreement and begins wiping off the bar top again. “You got that right.”

I put the empty glass down and open an app on my phone. I stand up and stretch my arms and crack my back. I glance at the cigarette pack on the bar top and decide to leave the sole cigarette inside for somebody else that needs it.

“Want me to call you a cab?”

“Nah, that’s okay. I just called for a ride,” I say, holding up my phone. Even with living and working in the city, I can’t remember when’s the last time I called a cab. Guess Tom probably still calls cabs for the old timers. “Take it easy, Tom.”

“Good luck to ya.”

I walk outside the bar into the cool, misty spray of rain. As I wait for my ride, I try to find the words I’ll say to tell my family I lost my job. I wonder if my kids will look up long enough from their electronics to fully understand, or if they’ll be just as oblivious as I was as a kid. Only now do I understand how my father must’ve felt that day, as I stand in his shoes.

Funny how things come around full circle.